Use the change culture that's already there

As a coach I often help people to unstuck themselves from the difficult situations that feel new to them.

One trick I use is to ask them how they did do similar things but in other parts of their life.

For example, if someone’s struggling with a project decision, I’ll ask, “Remember any hard personal choices you’ve made before? Like choosing where to live? Deciding if you'll move in with your partner or not?” Then the person starts talking about how she usually make decisions. Then I ask,

“Can you use any of those ways of thinking for your work project you told me about?”

Tada! Here comes the "aha moment". The person then realizes she's got the skills—she just needs to move them from their personal life to work.

When it comes to changing things up in a service or organization, especially for making it more sustainable, we can do the same thing. Sustainability is a huge change! But most organization already went through other big changes! Maybe it's a merge. Maybe it's some new technology change that happened 30 years ago. These are all things that were changed. And we can ask ourselves: What can we copy from those change experiences that worked? Who were the key players? What were the key moments that helped shift the culture?

Often, we’ve got all the resources and experience we need to make change happen. It’s just not where we thought to look.

Action question

Who are the interesting people you can ask about how successful changes happened here in the past? What successful changes in your organization’s culture are you already aware of? What can you learn from these examples?

The inspiration behind this principle

This principle is based on a conversation I had with Michel Sterckx, a project manager working on a big sustainability project for the Salvation Army in Switzerland. Watch the conversation in French.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.

• Written with AI help: This principle draft is based on an audio note I took while walking that was transcribed and cleaned using Audiopen. I then reviewed and improved the text by hand.